Greasing those wheels cost a hundred grand. Easy money. The security guards cost a little more, but they understood the offer clearly. The owner would deal with them, or he'd deal with me. None of them wanted to deal with me. The behemoth hung from a hook in the old meat packing factory. This was one of those acquisitions I'd been "after" for the Royals for a while.
It also put this body squarely in the center of 19 Diamonds territory and gave me plausible deniability. I didn't give one good goddamn about deniability, but my cleaners did. Whatever. As it was, I'd already put in calls to find out where Sharpe's plane was going.
Of course, they hadn't filed a fucking flight plan. The family had a dozen properties around the world in their name that didn't count what they had in their corporate assets. I needed to go back to the apartment and check my cameras. My fucking phone was useless, but I had this guy right here and right now.
And he was going to answer my questions.
As soon as his dumb ass woke up. Blood dripped steadily from his nose. I'd enjoyed the savage beating I'd given him.
Maybe a little too much.
I wasn't going to cry over spilt blood.
The slam of a door rang through the warehouse, echoing off the old metal fridges and abandoned equipment. I sent a security team through periodically to clear out any detritus or squatters.
Hand on my gun strapped behind my back, I faced the open door to the fridge I was using for this interrogation. I'd only told two people where I would be.
"I come in peace," Freddie announced, scuffing his shoes against the dirty cement floors. "Mostly. Also—why the hell are we doing this in an old crack den?"
Relaxing my grip on the gun, I started forward and narrowly dodged the fist flying at my face as Jasper cut around the corner. I caught the next swing, and then delivered my own sharp jab before I shoved him away.
Barely stumbling a half-step, Jasper pivoted and faced me. Fists already clenched, he was already lunging at me.
"Guys!" Freddie called, before releasing a shrill whistle. The noise actually hurt with how it rebounded off the metal. "This is not about your dicks or your dickishness."
The sober note was so un-Freddie-like, I almost glanced at him but I didn't dare take my attention off Jasper. Not when the hate in his eyes had taken on a whole new dimension. His anger I could take, even the blame after I'd followed the plan and walked away from the Vandals.
This though?
No, this was him in a killing rage.
"I tried to get to her," I told him. "I wasn't fast enough."
That was on me.
"But I'm not giving up and I will fucking find her and bring her back, if it's the last thing I do."
She did not want to go back to her family.
Eyes narrowing, Jasper glared at me. The ice in his slate gray eyes was so jagged they threatened to leave me bleeding. "What if she doesn't want to come back?" He bit off every word like he fired bullets.
In a way, he was.
Because beneath all that anger was fear and pain.
I couldn't fix it, not yet.
But he wasn't alone. "Then she can fucking tell me she doesn't want to come back here. If she doesn’t, fine, we’ll go there to be with her if that’s what she needs.”
We. Not just me.
Tension still straining at his muscles and in the flex of his jaw, Jasper straightened slowly. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything, but make sure she knew how to defend herself. The only way they got in, was she let them in. The only way she left was if she went willingly."
"Then she wants to be gone." The rawness in his voice was brutal. If Milo could fucking see this, he'd shut up about thinking anyone was using her as a whore. Fuck me, if he ever said anything like that again, I was gonna break his jaw until he remembered the manners we'd all been taught.
"No," I said in the same breath as Freddie.
"She didn't want to," Freddie said, coming closer and still sounding so damn serious. That snagged Jasper's attention. That pulled his focus away from me. "It was in her voice. She lied to me. She was so damn sad, but she didn't want to go. They did something."
Jasper's expression tightened then he glanced at the man hanging from the hook. "This the guy?"
"The driver," I answered, relaxing a fraction now that Jasper's temper seemed to have been defused. Or at least had a new target. "He took her from my building straight to the airport."
"Could be a nobody," Freddie suggested, coming to stand between us.
"If he hadn't been armed for bear, I'd agree." I kept my tone mild, then motioned to his weapons, which lay across a table on the far side of the room. A pair of Glocks. Two six-inch plus long knives. A flip blade. A taser. Three sets of zip tie cuffs. His phone. The bullet proof vest.
I'd stripped him down to his pants. Even emptied his shoes.
"The car's in the larger freezer on the other side." It had a roll open door and I'd had one of my people stash it in there. If they had any kind of tracking system, the high-density lead and heavy metals in the old fridge would block it. At least until I could strip it down.
Then again, if this fucker had friends who wanted to give me something to vent on, I'd be happy to rip them up too.
"Kel and Vaughn are on the way," Jasper said as he stripped off his own jacket, then his shirt. Why get everything bloody if you didn't have to. "We were finishing a job or we'd have been back faster."
The last came out in an almost apologetic tone as he glanced at Freddie. Finally, I studied the kid. Well, not really a kid anymore, but still younger than the rest of us. His eyes were shadowed and his expression bleak, but also determined.
"What did she say?" I asked him. "Exactly."
He exhaled, but stared at the man hanging from the hook as Jasper moved around the empty fridge. He was either examining what I had to work with, or cooling himself down so he could get answers, instead of just beating the guy to death.
We needed the former, but the latter might help slake some of the rage pounding through my veins. Everything was off about this situation. Her expression when she'd seen me at the airport. Even from that far away, I'd seen the sadness.
But I'd also seen fear a moment before she squared her shoulders and the emotion vanished. Buried.
Just. Like. Milo.
She'd been hiding so fucking much from us and it had been right there in front of me.
"She said she had to go home. It was time. When I told her one of us would come get her, she said no, not to the clubhouse. To my real home." His tone was dead neutral as he recited the conversation. No emotion at all. "I told her she didn't want to do that. I know she didn't. Then she said her mother was sick and her father had a heart attack."
Both of those could be fact-checked. I reached for my phone but the shattered screen was no fucking help.
"I told her not to do it. I told her to stay there, and we'd talk and make a plan." He compressed his lips. "She said, "Freddie. Stop. Thank you for wanting to do it, for making me laugh and for being you. But I have to do this. I need you to tell everyone this was my choice." If he'd just slammed a blade into my chest it would have hurt less. "I said, 'I don't want you to go.' She apologized then when I said I'd head straight there, she hung up—but only after she said, 'Thank you for caring. I'll call when I can."